Sending email at the right time can mean the difference between receiving a prompt response and waiting all day. As someone who lives in Australia with colleagues who mostly reside in North America, Europe, and India, I know what this feels like.

Apple’s Mail app doesn’t come with a scheduler by default, but you can add the functionality using Automator and third party plugins.

Why Delay?

We now exist in a digital world that never sleeps, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t sleep. That’s why managing expectations is so important – how is anyone ever going to know the best time to reach you if you’re always available?

Thanks to the pressure placed upon us by read receipts, we feel compelled to reply to anything the second we see it, even if it’s 3 a.m. Maybe you do work best at unholy hours in your pyjamas, but your coworkers don’t need to know this. It might be a better idea to schedule everything for 8 a.m. the following morning.

There are a few other compelling reasons to delay sending that email. Maybe it’s really important, and you need to read over it before you send it. Maybe it’s someone’s birthday next week. Or maybe the recipient is away for 2 weeks, and you’d rather your message be near the top of the pile when they return.

There are two ways of doing this on your Mac. You can either make do with the software you already have, or invest in a paid tool to make life easier.

Scheduling With Automator

Automator might be your Mac’s most neglected program – find it in the Utilities folder, or search for it using Spotlight. It allows you to record workflows and automate all kinds of tasks, saving time and effort. You can use Automator to schedule an email by creating an application that sends your message, then scheduling that application to run.

1. Open Automator on your Mac and choose Application when prompted.

2. Under the Actions sidebar choose Mail, then click and drag New Mail Message into the panel on the right.

3. Add the recipient and contents of your email. If you would like to send multiple emails at once, keep adding them using the New Mail Message action.

4. Finally click and drag Send Outgoing Mail into the workflow, ensuring it’s at the very bottom.

6. Open the Calendar application, navigate to the date you would like to send your message and create a new event.

7. Double-click the event to bring up its info, click on the date, then activate the Alert drop-down menu and choose Custom. Now choose Open file, and point it at the Automator application you just saved. Adjust the timing if you like, then click OK.

SmallCubed is a small team of Mac developers who have created a useful set of plugins for Apple Mail. MailActOn is one particular product that includes a scheduler, allowing you to dictate exactly when an email is sent. You can choose to send immediately, after a delay, or on a date of your choosing at a specific time.

This is a Mail plugin, not an external service, which means your Mac will need to be on for it to work. Other features included with MailActOn include expanded keyboard shortcuts, automated filling tools, outbox rules for organizing sent messages, and some handy templates for email power users.

You can grab it in a bundle, or pay a one-off fee of $30 to send an unlimited number of scheduled messages. There’s a 30-day free trial, so be sure to test it out before you buy.

A free app called SendLater was once our recommended plugin for scheduling email with Apple Mail. The bad news is that it’s since been swallowed up and is now a part of MailButler, a whole suite of plugins that add extra functionality to Mail. Worse still, it’s an expensive package.

The plugin comes with a free option, which limits the user to “30 professional actions” per month. An action is basically using any of the app’s features, so at face value that’s 30 scheduled outgoing email messages per month. But the service drops additional hidden costs on you, like limiting your actions to a single email account.

You’ll need to cough up €7.95 per month for MailButler in order to send unlimited scheduled messages, from multiple email accounts. There’s also a business tier which adds a whole host of advanced features for just shy of €30 per month. At around €80 per year, MailButler isn’t financially viable for many users.

Alternative Methods

The above method and plugins are the best way to schedule mail using the default macOS Mail app. If you’re not satisfied with either of these, or you’re willing to switch to something else, consider ditching Apple Mail entirely.

Airmail ($10, pictured below) is probably best choice in terms of a third party email client. It supports iCloud, Gmail, IMAP, POP3, and a whole host of other email accounts. It also comes with a handy scheduler which allows you to send email at a later time (provided your Mac in on, and the app is running).

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Tom Bishop

December 10, 2018 at 2:42 am

Thanks for writing this article. I know I am commenting 4 years after this was initially written, but this was so helpful. Why are these features not standard in ALL email applications? What a shame that Apple does not build this feature into the Mail GUI and make it easily accessible to everyone. I saw that Outlook for MAC does have this feature but only if you are a Office365 subscriber (what a crock).

I am glad that Mozilla Thunderbird is at least watching out for the little guy. Thank you Mozilla! ....and thank you Tim Brookes for this post. I hope you revisit this again in the future and give us a 2019 update of what is available. I saw you updated it back in March of 2017, so you are keeping eye on it. Thank you!

Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Airmail can only schedule mail to send at a later time if you are using a Gmail or an Echange account, per the link provided above (handy scheduler). At one time I was considering Airmail for this reason ($10 is not bad), but I do not use gmail so gave it up. I cannot find any other advantage of Airmail over Apple mail other than that. Are there any?

Please edit this article to say that you must create a "On My Mac" calendar. This option will be hidden if you don't already have a local calendar! To do this (with Yosemite) you must disable all current online calendars in the account preferences. Now, when you select File->New Calendars-> "On My Mac" will appear. This took about 2 hrs to figure out...

Wow that sucks, I didn't realise it had been swallowed up. You might have joy using one of the other solutions (scheduling mail with Calendar) which won't cost you, or you could go all-out and pay a once-off fee for a client like AirMail which already supports the feature.

After having a look it seems like MailButler is free for light users, but you only get "30 actions" per month on this model. Their definition of an action is basically using any of the included features, so you might get on ok if you don't need to make heavy use of the feature?

The monthly charge for the service sucks though. I could understand a one-off payment, but €8 per month (or slightly "cheaper" at $70ish per year) seems ridiculous. Maybe Apple will introduce the feature with OS X 10.12, they've put a lot of work into Mail in recent updates!

If the computer is off at that time, but is turned on later, will the email send as soon as the computer is turned on? Also is there a good free animator app for android phones? That would solve the problem of my laptop being off at the time I want the email to send.

For those of you who are having the problem of the alert disappearing - the problem is that your calendar is connected to icloud. You need to create a calendar on your mac, this will make the 'open file' alert work. Here is a text that helped me solve it:

"OK guys- here's the problem. If you have iCloud Calendar turned on it means you want whatever file to open when you trigger it with an alert to happen on all your iCloud devices. It can't do that, so it won't (can't) hold the alert. You have to go to System Preferences>iCloud and uncheck Calendars. Then create a local calendar and try your alert again."

and

"I was too hasty in my previous reply- let me clarify.

You can still leave "Calendars" checked in iCloud System Preferences- in fact if you share a calendar with any other device this needs to be checked. But if you want to use alerts to trigger opening a file or application (like an Automator app) on your laptop it has to be on a non-iCloud calendar. You have to create a local calendar "On My Mac" called "My scripted events," or something like that.

For example, I want to set a date and time to open an Automator app I created called "Launch Slideshow." If I try to add an alert to open that file on an iCloud calendar, iCloud wants to open the file "Launch Slideshow" on my phone, my iPad, and everything that accesses that calendar in the cloud. This is impossible, even if I in fact have the file "Launch Slideshow" on the other devices because the path name is ultimately different. So calendar can''t hold the alert. Scripted events in Calendar have to be on a non-cloud calendar.

The workflow is as follows: Get Specified Finder Items, New Mail Message, Add Attachments to Front Message, Send Outgoing Messages.

I then created an Event in Calendar that launched the above application. Everything worked fine, except that the message was not sent. It automatically created the message, sending to the correct email address on the correct date, but the message did not automatically go out.

I'd like to point out a couple of tweaks, in the use of Automator to schedule emails, that may make it a little easier and more predictable to set up and test:

1) If, in testing this method, you set up a Calendar event to run an Automator application, you may find that it does not work, at first. This may be due to the fact that the event is still open in Calendar and may not have been saved. When you create Calendar event, the program doesn't necessarily save the new event until you move to another event or another day. You can ensure that your activating event is recorded by clicking 'Apply' or by clicking on another day or event, so that the newly-created event is actually added to the Calendar data file.

2) Since you've created a new application, the File Quarantine alert may be activated the first time you try to execute the new application you've created. If you're not there to approve it, the app may not execute. You can prevent this problem by inserting your own email address and some dummy-text in the message, when you create the Automator application, and then executing the application manually, so as to invoke and approve the File Quarantine alert before you actually employ it.

I am still having trouble with #2 - the file quarantine. I tried setting it up with my own email address and see that the second time this is scheduled, I don't get the warning. BUT, when I save the automator again for any reason, File Quarantine appears to reset and want to confirm execution again. So there appears to be no way to change the addressee without ending up blocked by File Quarantine. I'd have to send them one message just to get past quarantine. Apple has become quite an obstacle with its nanny software.

I figured out a workaround to the File Quarantine obstacle with changing the addressee. If you send the message to an addressbook group, then you can test and approve the execution of the script while having your own email in the group, then change the group recipient to your intended one before your scheduled sending time.

Good article and very well detailed. One problem I'm having is the "Your opening the application "x" for the first time..." warning. This means that, if I'm not at my computer to click "open", when the iCal event opens the email will not send.

Good article and very detailed. One problem I'm running into is the "Your opening the application "x" for the first time" warning. This means, if I'm not at my computer when the iCal event takes place, the email will not send until I tell OS X to open the application.

This functionality already exists in the default Mac email client. In order to receive email periodically, launch Mail on your Mac, click Mail at the top of the screen, then click Preferences. Under the General tab change the Check for new messages field to an interval that suits you.

You can't designate specific times, but if you want email every hour or every half-hour (or a custom period, say 90 minutes) then this allows you to do that.

what if I want all my emails to go into an outbox, before actually sending them, like in windows live mail.. and then when I`ve reread them and I want to send them I want a send/receive option (like windows) so that all emails in my outbox get sent at once